In a deal that will see UK readers get the newspaper up to six hours before it’s available in Australia, Océ is gearing up to expand its network even further across the world, says the company.

Copies of the The Australian are printed at Stroma’s digital production site in Southall, west London, and made available to passengers on board Qantas flights returning to Australia.

Océ claims to have produced more than 20million digital newspapers worldwide, a quarter of which have been rolled off the presses at Stroma.

Océ already has six production sites – at Singapore, New York, Los Angeles, Sydney and Merenschwand in Switzerland – and The Australian joins another 15 titles produced digitally as part of its expanding network. These span different continents and include titles such as The Guardian, Sydney Morning Herald, New York Times and the Globe and Mail, Toronto.

Steve Brown, Managing Director of Stroma, said: “Everybody knows there are challenging times in the newspaper market, but companies such as News Corporation, together with other major publishers, know that producing newspapers digitally opens up other potential revenue streams. We are proud to be the pioneers of Océ’s Digital Newspaper Network, which now has six sites around the world. And through our own means we’ve also extended our own portfolio of titles in London that now includes 75 titles across the globe.”

Paul Krisson, Océ’s leading specialist in digital newspapers, said: “We are proud and delighted that the successful production of the Sydney Morning Herald in London has spurred on News Corporation to begin running their premier Australian title, The Australian, as part of the same Océ Digital Newspaper Network offering at Stroma. Now passengers in business and first class will have the luxury of reading tomorrow’s newspapers today when they fly back to Australia on Qantas flights. This is another significant step forward for Océ, the company that has over 80% of the world’s contracted digital newspaper production running on Océ presses.”